Rest in Peace, Sweet Camelot

Lucy Auclaire, was thirty-three years of age, and taught English to children in a small school in Algiers, across the Mississippi River, about two and half miles from Bourbon Street, in the heart of New Orleans.

She was Frenchy’s aunt, but was only a couple of years older. Her first husband was Frenchy’s uncle, Bernard. Bernard had sailed the world and wed a tiny beautiful Japanese living doll, brought her back to Marseille, then, he was unceremoniously stabbed to death in a bar fight, over an unpaid bar tab.

The Salan family took Lucy in and she wanted to expand on her American, Emerson College, education and went to school to learn French and to better her English. Lucy excelled at both, ultimately going on to The International School of Marseille, where she decided to major in English and became an instructor. When Frenchy was home, Lucy taught and used him to practice teaching English. She met and taught and fell in love with an American, and he asked her to move to New Orleans with him.

She always wanted to travel the world, like her husband before her, and also to escape the sexual advances by Frenchy’s father. From the moment she arrived in Marseille, she was the object of his affections, and Lucy wanted none of it, because she was so young and he was so old. She confided in Frenchy, her plans to move to America to escape and to teach and to possibly marry her American boyfriend, Robert.

Lucy didn’t start out with any political agenda, but she was drawn into it by her American boyfriend, Robert Dulong and his friends. They were mostly, uneducated beyond high school, if that, but had strong feelings of the government keeping their hands off legal citizens of the United States. Robert, or Robby as Lucy called him, felt that a free man should be able to run his own life with no intervention by anyone, including, most definitely, government of any kind, local, state, or federal. Lucy agreed, for the most part, having lived under the roof of a self- made freedom, OAS style, fighters in Frenchy’s dad and grandfather.

Lucy fit right into southern living, New Orleans living and Cajun living. Lucy loved being warm, and having access to the sea, via the Gulf of Mexico. Like the fishing villages of her homeland, Lucy saw the simple beauty of shrimp boats chugging in and out, bringing home a days’ harvest from the water.

Lucy enjoyed teaching children English, and as she learned, she could teach them French, Parisienne style. She felt it would supplement her student’s French, which they had learned from Cajun parents or grandparents; those Catholic French Canadian’s, forced to leave Nova Scotia, by the British. In turn, Lucy felt obligated to learn Spanish, as Cajun’s of Louisiana seemed to mash English, French and Spanish together into a mixed language. This sent Lucy back to college and Tulane University had the perfect campus to mix languages and to meet students from around the world, including a few Japanese students, so she could use her native tongue.

While she was studying Spanish, Lucy became involved as an evening assistant instructor of Political Science, and this class led her to a meeting of an off-campus group that were anti-government. The group was made up of mostly Spanish speaking pro Castro students, and they voiced their anti U.S., anti JFK feelings openly and bluntly.

Lucy brought Robert with her to her first meeting, not knowing if she’d be surrounded by men, and Robert was her protector. The meeting was much larger than she expected, with about fifty men and women, each voicing their opposition, and denouncing the fiasco, known as The Bay of Pigs. Robert, voiced his disapproval too, and was welcomed to future meetings, including some military like maneuvers, somewhere in the bayou country, away from prying government eyes. They were to be held the second week of April, 1963.